"The reservoir of molten rock underneath Yellowstone National Park in the United States is at least two and a half times larger than previously thought. Despite this, the scientists who came up with this latest estimate say that the highest risk in the iconic park is not a volcanic eruption but a huge earthquake."It hasn't grown that much, it's only that our measuring techniques have improved and we now know much better it's full extent. Still, some pretty cool science here. "New pictures of this plumbing system show that the reservoir is about 80 kilometres long and 20 kilometres wide, says Robert Smith, a geophysicist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. “I don’t know of any other magma body that’s been imaged that’s that big,” he says."

"Jamie Farrell, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Utah, mapped the underlying magma reservoir by analysing data from more than 4,500 earthquakes. Seismic waves travel more slowly through molten rock than through solid rock, and seismometers can detect those changes.

The images show that the reservoir resembles a 4,000-cubic-kilometre underground sponge, with 6–8% of it filled with molten rock. It underlies most of the Yellowstone caldera and extends a little beyond it to the northeast."

The capitol of the state is Nevada City, and I was just there while participating in the Scratch and Spit yearly get together. The day after we were in Carson City was the Nevada Day parade, so that bear was probably lurking around in the nearby hills, just waiting to pillage his human victims!

Actually, at last years S&S, a black bear got into the trash just outside the door to our cabin, and the five of us had to shoo him away. Nothing like having a 300 pound bruin right outside your door. Fortunately for us, we outnumbered him, and he ambled off, but not really very willingly. If it had been just one of us, maybe raw human (sushi for bears) could have been on the menu that year.

"Koch exchanged one fifth of his 5,000 bitcoins, generating enough kroner to buy an apartment in Toyen, one of the Norwegian capital’s wealthier areas."So Bitcoin to real property. This guy is no fool.

Sunday, October 27, 2013

For little old me, the end of summer and the start of fall begins with the annual get together of some friends at South Lake Tahoe known among the the participants as Scratch and Spit.

One member of the band hosts at a rustic cabin at the lake, and the highlight is normally the trip out to some wild spot to engage in dirt road driving and shooting.

This year it was at a high and lonely spot near Monitor Pass and overlooked by Leviathan Peak.

High and lonely is no joke here. A dusting of snow in the shady spots remains from some early storms, although the weather now is bright and shiny. Other than one other guy and his dog in a white truck, we saw no one else.

One of the shooters is a traditional Ruger Blackhawk chambered unconventionally in the antique 256 Winchester Magnum. It makes a satisfying boom.

My favorite was my newest, the little Ruger SR-22. Practice is the key here, and by the end of our session in the woods I could hit quite a few things first shot.

Slinkard Valley on the way down to Highway 395. Notice the fall yellow along the tiny creek bed far below.

One lonely cottonwood was still in it's best fall yellow, although nearly all the aspens higher up were completely bare.

The end of the day was spent at J T's Basque Bar and Restaurant, in Gardnerville, Nevada. I finally made good on my threats to order the unusual menu item of pig's feet and tripe. Umm, next time it's back to lamb!

The place is exactly what one would think of as an old west bar and saloon. The mirror on the wall was made in Glasgow, Scotland using diamond dust, and came here on a ship around the Horn. You can see the diamond dust in it if you shine a flashlight into it. A myriad of famous and not so famous have watered themselves here, including Johnny Cash, Clark Gable, Mark Twain, Ulysses S. Grant and Teddy Roosevelt. There is a bra hanging on the wall that is supposedly from Rachel Welch, who donated it for display during one visit.

First called Egan Spring for explorer Howard Egan, it was renameed Simpson Springs for Captain James H. Simpson following his work to establish a military mail route to California in 1858.

George Chorpenning established an overland mail station here for mule trains connecting Salt Lake with Sacramento, California. Later, it became a Pony Express and then Wells Fargo station through the Utah desert. The station was discontinued after the establishment of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869. However, it continued to be used for local freight traffic well into the 1890's.

It looks like a lonely spot, but the presence of reliable water makes it an attraction in the wide desert country around.

"As democracy is perfected,the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."

This badly. CBS reports there are now more people on welfare than there are full time workers.

There were 108,592,000 people in the United States in the fourth quarter of 2011 who were recipients of one or more means-tested government benefit programs, the Census Bureau said in data released this week. Meanwhile, according to the Census Bureau, there were 101,716,000 people who worked full-time year round in 2011. That included both private-sector and government workers.

That means there were about 1.07 people getting some form of means-tested government benefit for every 1 person working full-time year round.

Samuel Johnson has an appropriate comment on this:

There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain, and eagerness for the nearest good.

A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.

There are, in every age, new errors to be rectified, and new prejudices to be opposed.

No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.

It ought to be deeply impressed on the minds of all who have voices in this national deliberation, that no man can deserve a seat in parliament, who is not a patriot. No other man will protect our rights: no other man can merit our confidence.

Slavery is now no where more patiently endured, than in countries once inhabited by the zealots of liberty.Via American Digest